Dezeen » Stirling Prizehttp://www.dezeen.com
architecture and design magazineSun, 02 Aug 2015 20:32:54 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2RIBA Stirling Prize 2015 shortlist announcedhttp://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/16/riba-stirling-prize-2015-shortlist-maggies-centre-neo-bankside-whitworth-gallery/
http://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/16/riba-stirling-prize-2015-shortlist-maggies-centre-neo-bankside-whitworth-gallery/#commentsWed, 15 Jul 2015 23:01:16 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=737915The Royal Institute of British Architects has revealed the six buildings competing for this year's Stirling Prize, including a Maggie's cancer-care centre in Scotland, London's NEO Bankside housing, and the expansion of Manchester's Whitworth Gallery (+ slideshow). The Stirling Prize is awarded by the RIBA in recognition of the building that has made the greatest contribution […]

"Every one of the six shortlisted buildings illustrates why great architecture is so valuable – it has the power to delight, inspire and comfort us at all stages of our lives," said RIBA president Stephen Hodder, who himself won the prize in 1996 for his Centenary Building at the University of Salford.

"The shortlisted projects are each surprising new additions to urban locations – hemmed in to a hospital car park, in-filling an east London square, completing a school campus – but their stand-out common quality is their exceptionally executed, crafted detail."

"From the simple palette of materials used on the Maggie's Centre, to the huge repeating facades of NEO Bankside, every detail on every building, both internally and externally, is well-executed," he continued.

"Not only are these the best new housing projects, school, university, cultural and health buildings in the country today, they are game-changers that other architects, clients and local authorities should aspire to."

]]>http://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/16/riba-stirling-prize-2015-shortlist-maggies-centre-neo-bankside-whitworth-gallery/feed/10The golden age is over for public buildings in Britain, says Stirling Prize winnerhttp://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/17/steve-tompkins-stirling-prize-winner-interview-the-golden-age-is-over-for-public-buildings/
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/17/steve-tompkins-stirling-prize-winner-interview-the-golden-age-is-over-for-public-buildings/#commentsFri, 17 Oct 2014 14:14:27 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=570629News: architects in the UK are being "cut to the bone" by bureaucracy says architect Steve Tompkins, whose firm won the RIBA Stirling Prize last night for the Liverpool Everyman Theatre (+ interview). Haworth Tompkins' Everyman Theatre was named the best new building in Britain, beating works by leading architects including Zaha Hadid, RIBA Gold […]

Speaking to Dezeen after the ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects last night, Tompkins said that architects in Britain were under pressure to "dumb down" to meet the demands of clients and the "depressing" procurement system in the UK.

Steve Tompkins

"There's so much pressure to speed up and dumb down in terms of the way architects are being asked to work and we've always tried to resist that as a practice. Our practice is very much craft based and time based. We can't do what we do quickly," he told Dezeen.

"The whole procurement industry in the UK sometimes feels very depressing. It feels like there's more and more of a schism between the craft of the architects and the voice of the client."

Tompkins said the current system for commissioning public buildings in Britain was "unsustainable" and would create a profession of "exhausted and demoralised" architects.

"There's so many interfaces of bureaucracy and so many hurdles and tasks to half design the building before you get the commission. It feels very exhausting and demoralising to be doing that constantly and also incredibly wasteful of collective resources in the profession."

"The quality of the work what you can do once you get a commission suffers because you spent all of your resources trying to get the job," he said. "Anybody that's trying to do serious thoughtful work is being asked to produce images too quickly and being cut to the bone to an extent one can't think enough about a job."

The Everyman in Liverpool was Haworth Tompkins' first new-build theatre project. The firm has previously completed the refurbishment work for the Young Vic theatre in London's Waterloo area, and is currently responsible for the ongoing extension and refurbishment of Denys Lasdun's National Theatre on the Southbank.

Tompkins said he was happy to be developing a reputation as a theatre specialist.

"They are such brilliant projects to work on. You tend to find a calibre of client that is informed, passionate, practical, emotional intelligent, and instinctively collaborative," Tompkins told Dezeen.

"Plus the fact that they're public buildings, they have cache and often they have a budget – all of those things mean that it's a nice place to be in."

But he said that the firm had been "lucky" to be building during a period of heavy public spending, and was now having to look further afield for future projects, as funding in the UK dries up.

Among the countries it is currently working in are New Zealand and Lebanon.

"We were so lucky to catch the wave with the Royal Court and through that whole surge of publicly funded theatres," he said. "We were very much at the right place at the right time and I think there's less of an appetite now."

"I hope the cache and the profile from the award will find us other channels for us to do what we want to do. I hope it doesn't change the way we work."

Read the edited transcript from our interview with Steve Tompkins:

Anna Winston: Congratulations.

Steve Tompkins: Thank you, it's really amazing, really amazing. Unexpected, of course you can never predict with a shortlist like that which way it's going to go, so. We had no fixed expectation at all but now we've won it's just extraordinary, it's an extraordinary feeling.

Anna Winston: Did you have any idea that this was a project that was going to win you prizes when you started? Was that an aspiration?

Steve Tompkins: You can never try and predict that stuff but the building has had an incredibly happy trajectory. It's been one of those projects where every part of the team has reinforced another part and quite quickly you establish, you know, a really strong relationship of trust and candour. That's infectious on a project. I think it has brought the best out in everybody.

Anna Winston: It very easily could have gone wrong – the original building was very loved.

Steve Tompkins: Yes. There was a lot of jeopardy in the project. But it's also a spur to take enough risk to bust through it and get to something which feels genuinely new but also has the capacity to evoke the quality of the old building. It's felt like a difficult thing to pull off. It feels like a balance to strike and I think it's taken all of our resources to try and make that look easy.

Anna Winston: You're getting a bit of a reputation for doing theatre buildings…

Steve Tompkins: We are and I hope it continues because they are such brilliant projects to work on. You tend to find a calibre of client that is informed, passionate, practical, emotional intelligent, and instinctively collaborative. All of those things are a gift to an architect who likes to work in the way we do. Plus the fact that they're public buildings and they have cache and often they have a budget – all of those things mean that it's a nice place to be in. Having said that, the Everyman is the first new build we've done in that field, which was an easy thing for us to forget, let alone anyone else.

Anna Winston: The National Theatre is an extension, really, isn't it?

Steve Tompkins: The National is really very much a labour of love but also very much a duty of care, this is a very delicate important building. And like the Everyman, those physical manifestations have to pay honour to the history of the National but also to have the courage, and to an extent the insouciance, to play a little with it, because that's the only way you'll move forward, but in a way that one hopes Lasdun would support. If its too slavish, or too deferential it would be pointless.

The National as an artefact is infinitely more important and rightly it has a constituency of protectors and apologists, which again rightly need to be convinced about what's happening. But that's just the nature of the beast and as I say you have to go at that with a degree of courage otherwise you're lost.

Anna Winston: Are you considering any more theatre projects in the UK or are you having to look further afield now?

Steve Tompkins: The latter. We're definitely having to look further afield. We're doing some work in Christchurch at the moment at the earthquake centre with the theatre there. We've been having some other conversations further afield. I've just come back from Jordan where I've been to talking to some Arab practitioners often in very vulnerable delicate situations. In a way that's a social and intellectual pro-bono exercise, rather than looking for the next big project, but I think it all adds up to a body of research which bears fruit in unexpected ways and at unexpected times.

Anna Winston: Do you think the golden age of public building is over for now?

Steve Tompkins: I think that's probably right. I think certainly with the public National Lottery funding we were so lucky to catch the wave with the Royal Court and through that whole surge of publicly funded theatres. We were very much at the right place at the right time and I think there's less of an appetite now. That's partly because the work has been done for this generation, and someone doesn't want to keep flogging a dead horse with jobs that don't need doing. But there's a lot of work that can be extrapolated out of the work we've been doing in the UK and I think as a practice we probably feel a level of readiness and maturity to tackle that in a way we probably wouldn't have done five years ago. Winning the Stirling Prize is probably not unhelpful in that respect.

Anna Winston: Do you think that the win is going to change the kind of clients that approach you?

Steve Tompkins: At the moment, in the heat of the moment, it just feels like the most lovely endorsement of the way that we have been working. There's so much pressure to speed up and dumb down in terms of the way architects are being asked to work and we've always tried to resist that as a practice. Our practice is very much craft based and time based. We can't do what we do quickly, but what we can do is keep learning. So in a way I hope the cache and the profile from the award will find us other channels for us to do what we want to do. I hope it doesn't change the way we work.

Anna Winston: Where do you think that pressure comes from – to be faster and produce more and more?

Steve Tompkins: The whole procurement industry in the UK sometimes feels very depressing to us. It feels like there's more and more of a schism between the craft of the architects and the voice of the client that actually will express the need of the building. There's so many interfaces of bureaucracy and so many hurdles and tasks to half design the building before you get the commission. It feels very exhausting and demoralising to be doing that constantly and also incredibly wasteful of collective resources in the profession. It seems to me like it's a limited amount of time that that's sustainable before we all become exhausted and demoralised, and the quality of the work that you can do once you get a commission suffers because you spent all of your resources trying to get the job.

Anna Winston: Have you seen that happen elsewhere?

Steve Tompkins: Well it's certainly happening to us! So we speak from personal and bitter experience but I'm sure our experiences are by no means unique. Anybody that's trying to do serious thoughtful work is being asked to produce images too quickly and being cut to the bone to an extent one can't think enough about a job. That does feel difficult and it feels systematically problematic.

]]>http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/17/steve-tompkins-stirling-prize-winner-interview-the-golden-age-is-over-for-public-buildings/feed/5Liverpool Everyman Theatre by Haworth Tompkins wins Stirling Prize 2014http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/16/liverpool-everyman-theatre-haworth-tompkins-wins-stirling-prize-2014/
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/16/liverpool-everyman-theatre-haworth-tompkins-wins-stirling-prize-2014/#commentsThu, 16 Oct 2014 19:27:22 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=569952News: Haworth Tompkins' new home for the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, featuring a curved auditorium built from 25,000 reclaimed bricks, is the 2014 winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize for the biggest contribution to British architecture this year. The project by London studio Haworth Tompkins involved designing a new home for the popular Liverpool theatre, formerly housed in […]

The project by London studio Haworth Tompkins involved designing a new home for the popular Liverpool theatre, formerly housed in a 19th-century chapel, creating a 400-seat auditorium and a generous foyer.

The walls of the old building had to be carefully dismantled so that the bricks could be reused within the new theatre. A new facade was created from sunshades etched with the portraits of some of the English city's residents.

The judges described the theatre as "hugely welcoming" and "exceptionally sustainable", and praised its "clever use of materials with interlocking spaces and brilliant lighting".

"As Haworth Tompkins' first completely new theatre, it is a culmination of their many explorations into the theatre of the 21st century. It is groundbreaking as a truly public building, which was at the heart of the client's philosophy and ethos. In summary, an extraordinary contribution to both theatre and the city," they said.

The Stirling Prize was awarded this evening in a ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.

Speaking this evening, Haworth Tompkins co-founder Steve Tompkins commented: "Winning the RIBA Stirling Prize is an enormous honour for our project team and our clients, the reward for an intensive collaboration over almost a decade, during which we have grown to love the Everyman and the great city that it serves."

"It is also an important endorsement of our studio's ethos and an encouragement to carry on working the way we do, despite the pressures all of us are under to speed up and dumb down. We couldn't be more delighted."

]]>http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/16/liverpool-everyman-theatre-haworth-tompkins-wins-stirling-prize-2014/feed/2RIBA Stirling Prize 2014 shortlist announcedhttp://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/17/riba-stirling-prize-2014-shortlist/
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/17/riba-stirling-prize-2014-shortlist/#commentsWed, 16 Jul 2014 23:01:58 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=497775News: the six buildings shortlisted for this year's Stirling Prize have been announced, including The Shard by Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid's Olympic Aquatics Centre, and Europe's largest public library by Mecanoo (+ slideshow). Irish firm O'Donnell + Tuomey – who has been previously nominated four times but never won the prize – made the shortlist with […]

The Stirling Prize is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in recognition of the building that has made the greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year.

RIBA president Stephen Hodder said this year's shortlist shows how poetic public architecture can be. "The shortlist comprises no ordinary new swimming pool, office block, theatre, library or university – they are beautiful, inspiring and transformative new buildings that their communities can relish and be proud of."

"This RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist is sending out the clear message that great buildings don’t only need great architects and clients, but they need the patronage of the community they have been designed to serve if they are to be truly successful," he said.

"They are remarkably crafted buildings and the closer you look at their detail, both internally and externally, and their materiality, the more impressive they become."

]]>http://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/17/riba-stirling-prize-2014-shortlist/feed/6"Utterly magical" building wins top UK architecture prize - but no cashhttp://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/27/utterly-magical-building-wins-stirling-prize-but-no-cash/
http://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/27/utterly-magical-building-wins-stirling-prize-but-no-cash/#commentsFri, 27 Sep 2013 12:42:58 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=364869News: Stirling Prize judge Tom Dyckhoff has spoken of being "punched in the gut" by the house-inside-a-castle that clinched the award last night, although its architects missed out on the usual £20,000 cash bounty, as organisers RIBA failed to find a sponsor. "It ticked all the criteria of the Stirling Prize, which is a list […]

"It ticked all the criteria of the Stirling Prize, which is a list as long as your arm," Dyckhoff told Dezeen. "But it also punched you in the gut in a way that is really hard to explain."

The renovation of Astley Castle in Warwickshire by Witherford Watson Mann is the first individual house and the first restoration project to win the award, which goes to the building deemed the greatest contribution to British architecture in the last year.

"It's really easy to be romantic about ruins," added Dyckhoff, journalist and co-presenter of BBC's The Culture Show. "You know everyone loves a ruin and its history, particularly in this country. But the building was utterly magical. It was intellectual, it was clever, it was incredibly pragmatic, it was affordable, it was clever right the way down to the smallest detail. It had a great concept and it had the great details, and that is a really winning combination and it was magical and romantic."

Photograph by Philip Vile

However the winning architects missed out on the £20,000 cheque, which has been handed to every Stirling Prize-winner since the award's inception in 1996.

"We thought we would find a sponsor but we didn't," said RIBA Head of Awards Tony Chapman. "It's sad". Chapman said he personally called all the shortlisted architects to explain that there would be no cash prize this year.

Architect William Mann nonetheless described the win as "fantastic" and said he believed this year's shortlist represents a "return to the values" of architecture. "[The project] has been an opportunity to communicate the values that we're interested in," he said.

Stephen Witherford added: "I believe very strongly that old and new buildings work together. Sometimes we try to separate them, but there's a happy coming together here."

Photograph by J Miller

The project was initiated by architectural charity The Landmark Trust, who launched a design competition for a holiday house that could be created within the decaying twelfth-century structure.

"It was really exciting for us to take the ruins of a historic building and to do something completely new in it," said Landmark Trust director Anna Keay. "Normally we follow a relatively straightforward approach with preservation jobs, but to have resolved upon something more adventurous and to find Witherford Watson Mann to realise an adventurous approach to historic building was to us, as the clients and The Landmark Trust, incredibly exciting and I hope this has given inspiration to others."